Depending on who you ask Mr. Elop is either a quiet genius at saving companies -- or a bizarre master of destroying them.

The Canadian executive grew up in Ontario and went to school at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, studying computer engineering and management. Six years after his 1986 graduation, he scored his first major position as director of consulting at Lotus Software. At Lotus he played an admittedly smaller role in big direction decisions. But following an acquisition by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) in 1995, he would soon move on to more influential roles.

Stephen Elop [Image Source: IBTimes]

Joining Boston Chicken (and Einstein Brothers Bagels), a rapidly growing fast-food franchise, he was appointed CIO. He rode along until 1998 when the company's large debts led it to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections. Boston Chicken was subsequently acquired by McDonald's Corp. (MCD) and rebranded Boston Market.

Again, Mr. Elop jumped ship to another role, becoming an IT manager at Macromedia, a software firm who wrote the widely used Flash plugin and the Dreamweaver webpage development environment. Mr. Elop ascend to CEO in 2005, and three months later the company was sold to a top web/graphics software firm Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE) -- apparently Mr. Elop had learned a trick or two from the sales of Lotus and Boston Market.

Mr. Elop was CEO at Macromedia in 2005 and suprvised its sale to Adobe. [Image Source: Fotki]

But it is here that opinions diverge. Some believed that Adobe had overpaid and that Stephen Elop had played a clever game by first stoking rumors of a possible Microsoft buyout, which in turn triggered a panicked bid from Adobe. Indeed, Adobe paid $3.4B USD for Macromedia -- a 25 percent premium on share prices before the deal was announced. While Macromedia was profitable [PDF], at the time investors were still quite wary with the fresh memory of the burst of the dot com bubble still in their rear view and this kind of premium for a software firm due to speculation about secret counterbids from another rival seemed downright "paranoid" to quote one analyst.

Others weren't as impressed with Mr. Elop's decision. Adobe had a poorer reputation for customer service at the time and many were angered at the prospect of it gaining a virtual "monopoly" over key internet software.

Even as this debate raged on, Mr. Elop didn't take long to leave from his new position as president of worldwide operations at Adobe. In 2007 he jumped ship to Juniper Networks, Inc. (JNPR) a Californian networking equipment manager. He spent a quiet year there as COO.

Then he jumped to Microsoft, where he served as head of the business division, producing a number of successful, if controversial products, such as Office 2010, which continued to back the "ribbon" menu format, introduced in 2007 before his arrival.

II. Nokia Run -- A Trojan Horse or a Turnaround Wizard?

In 2011 he would make another surprise jump up the corporate ladder, becoming CEO of struggling Finnish phonemaker and telecommunications equipment firm Nokia Oyj. (HEX:NOK1V). Many were wary of his ties to Microsoft and track record of being tied to firms who were acquired.

Again, here's where controversy take hold. Some say that Mr. Elop indeed has proved that he was a Trojan horse on a clear mission to devalue Nokia, briefly restore it to profitability, and then pass it off to Microsoft as a vehicle for Windows Phone. They cite a $25M USD payout Mr. Elop received as part of the purchase deal as "proof" of this alleged conspiracy.

Others contend that Nokia's aging Symbian "burning platform" left it in an uncompetitive position and that Mr. Elop performed admirably given the circumstances, and that Mr. Elop's past relationship with Microsoft was not a factor in his strategy. They point out that the sale allowed Nokia to focus on the stable telecommunications market rather than dividing its focus.

But a new report in Bloomberg is raising fresh questions -- not only about Mr. Elop's historical connections to major corporate acquisitions, but also regarding his fitness to lead Microsoft.

Bloomberg reports that Mr. Elop's proposed plan to Microsoft's CEO search group is to untie Microsoft's various software products -- most notably Office -- from Windows. While Office is current available for Apple, Inc. (AAPL) Mac computers, Mr. Elop wants to offer full fledged versions of Office for the Apple iPad, tablets running Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android, and notebook computers running Google's Chrome OS. He'd pursue a similar approach for other products such as the Visual Studio development environment.

Windows sales have fallen, but should Microsoft kill the OS and focus on software? That seems to be Mr. Elop's alleged vision. [Image Source: Reuters]

Besides emphasizing Office, Elop would be prepared to sell or shut down major businesses to sharpen the company’s focus, the people said. He would consider ending Microsoft’s costly effort to take on Google with its Bing search engine, and would also consider selling healthy businesses such as the Xbox game console if he determined they weren’t critical to the company’s strategy, the people said.

At Nokia, Elop cut 40,000 jobs and reduced operating expenses by 50 percent. While Microsoft doesn’t face the same cost constraints, Elop would probably impose job cuts and belt-tightening to create smaller teams, said the people.

Maybe unloading Bing would be a good idea. [Image Source: Business Insider]

Between breaking an exclusivity -- an approach which to many, would be akin to Microsoft abandoning Windows, its core product -- and the plans to chop off other business units for the auction, the most prevalent reaction at the overall plan appears to be shock. Some are asking -- is Microsoft "Trojan horsing" itself?

Of course, this report has not been confirmed, and even Bloomberg makes it clear that its sources said Mr. Elop had not finalized his proposed plan to the search committee.

The search business and even Xbox, which has been a very successful product, are detracting from that. We would want them to focus on their best competencies. My view is there are some parts of that operation they should probably spin out, get rid of, to focus on the enterprise and focus on the cloud.

Sounds like true or not, some have the same idea Mr. Elop supposedly does for radically transforming Microsoft.

It's worth watching this one carefully, as Stephen Elop does have an uncanny knack for both scoring unlikely positions of power and for chopping up and packaging companies for sale. Could Microsoft appoint Mr. Elop CEO? And if it does, would he make the wild decision of leaving the struggling Windows platform to a slow death and unloading major portions of Microsoft's diverse hardware, software, and internet service empire? We shall wait and see.